Sunday, December 20, 2015

So full disclosure first - I'm not a US citizen, and I really, really like flying robots. (I've built four of them.) I'm also a big fan of logic and consistency, which used to be a popular band back in the day but not so much anymore.

In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration has announced it will require all "drone" operators to register with the agency. Their definition of "drone" includes any remote controlled flying device over .55lb. (250 grams) That means quads, multis, foam planes, helicopters, blimps, balloons, and possibly Dune Buggies if they have too much 'hang time after sweet jumps. (it's unclear)

Paper planes are still fine. Any uncontrolled thrown thing is fine. 50-foot Frisbees are allowed. Rockets are cool. If you put foam wings on your iPhone, you're in a grey area deeper than shadow.

I'm not in-principle against enhanced safety, but this doesn't do that. The word "Overreach" is being used a lot. Congress explicitly said they couldn't do this. This moves the FAA from regulating a few dozen major airlines, to regulating the behavior of millions of private US citizens.

Quick review of what the FAA is: It got it's major "powers" in the 1960s, at a time when passenger planes were colliding over New York and dropping flaming wreckage on sleeping people in their apartments. People didn't like that. So the response was to invent the Air Traffic Control system and give the FAA powers over civil aviation, instead of letting the Airlines make up their own rules.

This has done a great deal to improve air safety. But it should be noted that planes still crash on New York quite a lot. There were the famous 11th September 2001 incidents, but who remembers Flight 587? which two months later crashed onto Queens because Air Traffic Control had told them to take off into the backwash of another plane, and some "aggressive piloting" caused the tail stabilizer to snap off. At a time when you'd think they'd be paying attention.

In fact, if you look at the big accidents (rarely deliberate), they're all caused either by pilots crashing into things they couldn't see, (like mountains) or Air Traffic Control directing them to crash into things they didn't know were there (like other planes).

Not a single aviation fatality has actually occurred because of RC hobby planes. Which have also been flying since the 60's, long before modern brushless motors and batteries. (The 'gasser' era.)

Military drones have caused crashes, it's true... but not Hobbyists. In fact, there have been 400 major accidents caused by US military drones. (which are the size of a car, and often armed) They once hit a C-130 Hercules. (literally, the broad side of a barn) But the FAA doesn't regulate military air traffic. And it likes to exaggerate the civilian threat.

One of these things is not like the other.

So, the FAA has announced it will create a "Drone Registry", so that anyone who intends to do bad things with a drone will helpfully write their details on the device, and this will help police track them down and arrest them for bad behavior.

No, really! That's their cunning plan. Some cynical observers suggest this is just stage 1, and future stages will require anyone buying an RC device to provide registration at Point Of Sale, otherwise the whole concept is utterly useless. And then they'll have to regulate batteries, motors, and computers, because otherwise you just buy the parts off eBay and build it yourself.

Or alternately, if a Policeman sees you flying in a park, they can ask for your registration and thereby keep the sky safe from bad people.

So, all we have to do to eliminate the "drone threat" is to put millions of US citizens (many of them children) into a huge database that will be publicly accessible by anyone who wants their phone number and home address. The FAA will have enforcement powers over every family in the country.

One of my favorite things is the $5 registration fee. That doesn't sound like much, true, but that's also the same cost to register a full size Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet. Another sign that the FAA doesn't really distinguish between a hundred tonnes of flying metal and a piece of motorized foam-board.

This also costs $5 to register with the FAA.
It's a real one.

Amazingly, the US congress told the FAA they couldn't do this. The FAA went and did it anyway. Despite long-standing legislation that reads:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law relating to the incorporation of unmanned aircraft systems into Federal Aviation Administration plans and policies, including this subtitle, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft, if—
(1) the aircraft is flown strictly for hobby or recreational use;
(2) the aircraft is operated in accordance with a community-based set of safety guidelines and within the programming of a nationwide community-based organization;

Meanwhile the AMA (The Academy of Model Aeronautics, one of those "nationwide community-based organizations" the legislation mentions) has told all it's members to hold off on drone registration while they try to sort through all the conflicting reports. Latest news is that they intend to take legal action to fight the new rules.

And now, these people might get to weigh in.
Including the Notorious RBG!

So, in summary: the FAA wants every hobbyist over 13yo to put their details in a public database, (because, y'know, privacy of the general public is important...) contrary to existing law, and the leading community organisation wants to take it to court. Hobbyists are furious. None of the new rules will make the skies any safer.

It's a path that treats RC craft purely as a threat to "real airspace users", and ignores the immense opportunities. And it also puts the FAA on a collision course with civil liberties for the American public, and that's the kind of thing that gets them hauled before the Supreme Court which might strip them of their powers as unconstitutional overreach, (you can't even force Americans to register their guns!) and we'll have no oversight, which is even worse than bad oversight.

It's a shambles. A hypocritical, pointless, mess. Years will be lost fighting the "freedom vs order" civil war, instead of just pushing for technological solutions to what are essentially technological problems. (hint: GPS broadcast beacons & official listed "crashing zones" for RC craft that need to get out of the way of emergency crews. So models can automatically go "If I sense a medivac chopper nearby, I'll crash myself in the nearest zone".)

Instead, I'm sure everyone is busy stripping off their backups, flight loggers, and safety gear - to fit under the 0.55lb weight limit. Those parachute systems are heavy, y'know.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

If you're like me, you've often thought, "I really need GPS on a high-resolution camera, and probably accelerometers too, so I can do photogrammetry."

OK, maybe you don't. Even my spellchecker doesn't like the word "photogrammetry", which is when you take a whole bunch of photos of something with the intention of creating a 3D model (or other measurement) from the imagery.

Like what land surveyors do when they fly over with cameras to create topological maps. And like that, it really helps to know exactly where you were, and how the camera was positioned. A lot of the new algorithms can get by without it, but there's a time cost, and a lot of pathologies can be avoided if we start with a good bundle estimate.

Here's what I did as a first go:

An Aerial Photograph of my Aerial Photography Machine

That's a Raspberry Pi model A, with the 2k camera and WiFi modules, connected to a UBlox Neo6 GPS I got from Hobbyking last year. Less than $90 of stuff, most of which has been used in other projects. (And will again)

Techno-periscopes Up!

So here's what you need to know first: It doesn't work.
Well, I mean all the independent bits work fine, but not all together. That's the point. To spoil the ending: When the camera is operating, so much multi-megahertz digital interference is generated by the flat cable connecting the camera module, that the GPS loses signal lock.

Thar's yer problem right thar, boyo! The big flat white thing what's right near the little square doodad. And all bendy, too!

I'm sure I could also make a gripping yarn about how I bravely tracked down and cornered the bug, and how developing many features at once (streamed low-latency WiFi video, plus GPS) is a great way to find the problems, but leave yourself very confused about what causes them.

Close-up of the connections, showing how easy it is to wire a 3.3v GPS to the Pi.Standard linux 'gpsd' is used to decode the signals.The plastic cap of the left is just to protect that end of the connector from physical damage/shorts.

For a long time I assumed it was the WiFi streaming part, since it's an RF transmitter, and the GPS is an RF receiver, and all of it is cheap as beans, so logically... but no! Those parts are well engineered and stay out of each others bandwidth. You can WiFi and GPS just great. But the moment you start recording video to /dev/null, the GPS lights go out. That was the clincher.

If you're taking still photos, it's mostly fine. The GPS can stay locked on, and the brief static bursts during the camera shots are ignorable.

But I wanted video. And the moment you open up the throttle, it all fails.

Now, the obvious potential solution is to wrap a foil shield around the flat ribbon cable, especially where it bends, but that's something I'll need to do with great care, otherwise I've potentially got bits of foil flapping against the main electronic components and that's when the magic smoke comes out. There's also the question of how much of the digital path is exposed on the board. That would be harder to fix.

Perhaps a ground plane to shield them from each other; but shoving sheets of tin or copper in between is going to cause other issues, like making the WiFi directional, and other near-field effects. Argh.

So, you're saying the correct solution is a tiny Tinfoil Hat for the electron gnomes?Riiigghhtt...

Also, while the GPS and cable are pretty much right next to each other for illustrative purposes, I can assure you I tried moving the modules as far as I could (cable allowing) and it didn't help. I'm sure I could manage it with a long enough GPS extension cord, but if it can't fit in the one box, It's not very convenient.

But it you have a choice, plan on spreading the pieces out. That's probably your best bet.

So, alas, I don't have any guaranteed solutions to the problem yet. But I wanted to warn 'ye anyways.